Lebanon’s economic crisis has disrupted the country’s energy and water sectors, highlighting their interdependence. The methodologyinvolves surveying 150 municipalities across all Lebanese governorates, ensuring a comprehensive coverage of public and private waterresources. Data on water and energy were collected before and during the crisis to explore this nexus during periods of economic turmoil.The findings reveal a decline in water provision during the crisis, with the average weekly water supply plummeting from 49 h in 2019 to 22 hin 2023. Concurrently, the use of water tankers has surged from 26 to 44%, indicating a concerning shift in water acquisition methods.Despite the crisis, conventional water sources remain predominant, while unconventional sources account for less than 1% of the totalsupply. In response to the energy shortage, renewable energy sources have gained traction in residential, commercial, and industrial sectors.The scarcity and rising cost of electricity have driven the adoption of solar photovoltaics in the water sector, reaching 4.8% for extraction fromunderground reservoirs and 2.8% for distribution. Similarly, the use of solar water heaters has increased from 7.9 to 15.4% in 2023. Thesefindings underscore the interplay between energy and water security during periods of economic instability.
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Urban communities are particularly vulnerable to the future demand for food, energy and water, and this vulnerability is further exacerbated by the onset of climate change at local. Solutions need to be found in urban spaces. This article based around urban design practice sees urban agriculture as a key facilitator of nexus thinking, needing water and energy to be productive. Working directly with Urban Living Labs, the project team will co-design new food futures through the moveable nexus, a participatory design support platform to mobilize natural and social resources by integrating multi-disciplinary knowledge and technology. The moveable nexus is co-developed incrementally through a series of design workshops moving around living labs with the engagement of stakeholders. The methodology and the platform will be shared outside the teams so that the knowledge can be mobilized locally and globally.
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The importance of water and energy accessibility and use has become more important as new insight into their role for sustainable development goals has become mainstream. The inclusion of water and energy in strategic decision-making is thus key. Supply chain network design (SCND) in the food industry is an interesting case study for the incorporation of water and energy utilization during the design process of global production systems. In the current green SCND research, frequently, single indicators are used such as carbon emissions to measure environmental impact. This paper presents a case study applied to an orange juice supply chain, formulated as a multi-objective optimization model. A single environmental impact indicator optimization approach is paired against one that includes water and energy use explicitly in the objective function set. Mixed conclusions are shown from the results pairing the two strategies side by side.
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This paper pioneers the assessment of tourism's total global resource use, including its fossil fuel consumption, associated CO2 emissions, fresh water, land, and food use. As tourism is a dynamic growth system, characterized by rapidly increasing tourist numbers, understanding its past, current, and future contributions to global resource use is a central requirement for sustainable tourism assessments. The paper introduces the concept of resource use intensities (RUIs), which represent tourism's resource needs per unit of consumption (e.g. energy per guest night). Based on estimates of RUIs, a first assessment of tourism's global resource use and emissions is provided for the period 1900–2050, utilizing the Peeters Global Tourism Transport Model. Results indicate that the current (2010) global tourism system may require c.16,700 PJ of energy, 138 km3 of fresh water, 62,000 km2 of land, and 39.4 Mt of food, also causing emissions of 1.12 Gt CO2. Despite efforts to implement more sustainable forms of tourism, analysis indicates that tourism's overall resource consumption may grow by between 92% (water) and 189% (land use) in the period 2010–2050. To maintain the global tourism system consequently requires rapidly growing resource inputs, while the system is simultaneously becoming increasingly vulnerable to disruptions in resource flows.
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Thermal disinfection is probably the oldest water treatment method ever used. Similarly to other disinfection processes, it targets the inactivation of pathogenic (micro)organisms present in water, wastewater and other media. In this work, a pilot-scale continuous-flow thermal disinfection system was investigated using highly contaminated hospital wastewater as influent without any pre-treatment step for turbidity removal. The results proved that the tested system can be used with influent turbidity as high as 100 NTU and still provide up to log 8 microbial inactivation. Further results have shown energy consumption comparable to other commercially available thermal disinfection systems and relatively low influence on the investigated physical–chemical parameters.
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Rapid convergence of utility and mobility solutions enabled by data and the Internet of Things is future-proofing economies around the world, delivering liveability, sustainability and resilience, and importantly decreasing pressure on utility bills and infrastructure costs. Australians cannot miss out on the many benefits brought to families and businesses by the digitisation of infrastructure and services, not just reduced household bills but also the ability to generate income as prosumers, not consumers. Localised sustainable Next-Gen infrastructure and services are growing from within communities, creating a new class of consumer-the prosumer: where customers are more than consumers but also producers. Prosumers have the ability to generate free energy from the sun at home or office and sell the excess, recycle water and waste reaping the financial benefit, avoid the second largest household expense of a car by sharing mobility, and access shared data networks to plug in and play at little cost. Planning frameworks play a critical role in enabling a new utility prosumer future in Australia and reform of planning gateway processes is essential. This article highlights Sydney’s Central Park as a best practice urban infill development showcasing how the flows of water and energy are organised to provide enhanced sustainability, liveability and resilience for the local and neighbouring communities. Central Park proves the benefits of taking a precinct approach to utility and mobility services. It shows how these benefits can grow and be exported to neighbouring buildings and existing communities, in this case University of Technology driving inclusion and affordability. Central Park also demonstrates the opportunities to drive deeper socio/environmental benefits by enabling prosumer services through low-cost access to utility services and circular resource flows. Importantly, this article demonstrates that Central Park’s phenomenal sustainability benefits can be replicated at scale in land release communities, but planning reform is required.
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Dairy products are known for their relatively low impact on the environment per unit of nutritional value. The carbon footprint of cheese from the Netherlands has been reduced in recent years by minimizing energy and water consumption. However,there are other options for further improving the sustainability of cheese production. The dairy research team at Van Hall Larenstein University of Applied Sciences is revealing new possibilities.
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Videoverslag waarin de aanpak, maatschappelijke relevantie en belangrijkste uitkomsten van het RAAK Onderzoek 'Making GREEN Energy Sources Greener' worden besproken. In dit onderzoek is op verschillende drijvende zonneparken gekeken naar effecten van de installaties op waterkwaliteit en ecologie. De resultaten hiervan vormen aanleiding voor vervolgonderzoeken die inmiddels zijn gestart
YOUTUBE
Innovations are required in urban infrastructures due to the pressing needs for mitigating climate change and prevent resource depletion. In order to address the slow pace of innovation in urban systems, this paper analyses factors involved in attempts to introduce novel sanitary systems. Today new requirements are important: sanitary systems should have an optimal energy/climate performance, with recovery of resources, and with fewer emissions. Anaerobic digestion has been suggested as an alternative to current aerobic waste water treatment processes. This paper presents an overview of attempts to introduce novel anaerobic sanitation systems for domestic sanitation. The paper identifies main factors that contributed to a premature termination of such attempts. Especially smaller scale anaerobic sanitation systems will probably not be able to compete economically with traditional sewage treatment. However, anaerobic treatment has various advantages for mitigating climate change, removing persistent chemicals, and for the transition to a circular economy. The paper concludes that loss avoidance, both in the sewage system and in the waste water treatment plants, should play a key role in determining experiments that could lead to a transition in sanitation. http://dx.doi.org/10.13044/j.sdewes.d6.0214 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karel-mulder-163aa96/
MULTIFILE
Background: Although the general assumption is that patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) have decreased levels of physical activity, no review has addressed whether this assumption is correct. Methods: Our objective was to systematically review the literature for physical activity levels and aerobic capacity (VO2max). in patients with (RA), compared to healthy controls and a reference population. Studies investigating physical activity, energy expenditure or aerobic capacity in patients with RA were included. Twelve studies met our inclusion criteria. Results: In one study that used doubly labeled water, the gold standard measure, physical activity energy expenditure of patients with RA was significantly decreased. Five studies examined aerobic capacity. Contradictory evidence was found that patients with RA have lower VO2max than controls, but when compared to normative values, patients scored below the 10th percentile. In general, it appears that patients with RA spend more time in light and moderate activities and less in vigorous activities than controls. Conclusion: Patients with RA appear to have significantly decreased energy expenditure, very low aerobic capacity compared to normative values and spend less time in vigorous activities than controls
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